Military and civilian control of any designated airspace relies upon accurate projection of a vehicle's movement through the space. Radar systems and other tracking systems are used to determine the position of a vehicle in airspace. However, there is a time lag between the time the sensor measurement is made and the time the sensor data is received. Radar, for instance has a lag of several seconds. Consequently, the sensor data is “old” by the time it has been received. Thus, the tracking system data does not show the instantaneous position and attitude of a vehicle, only a past position and attitude.
Instantaneous positions and attitudes are predicted from the sensor data. The predicted positions and attitudes are used to control airspace.
Accurate predictions are important. Accurate predictions allow for denser traffic as well as significantly improved individual vehicle safety. If the movements of vehicles through airspace could be predicted with greater accuracy, multiple vehicles in airspace could be spaced tighter, allowing more vehicles in the space. Improved methods for more accurately tracking and projecting a trajectory of a vehicle through an air space are desirable.
Fast computational speed is also important. Computational speed can also contribute to overall latency. Therefore, it would also be desirable to improve computational speed of the predictions.